Posts Tagged ‘mac’

It seems ludicrous that a simulation of the middle-class lifestyle and the attendant pursuit of ever-more wealth and consumer goods isn’t already available to owners of Macintosh computers, but there you go. In any case, The Sims 4 [official site] – but won’t someone think of the pools? – is now out for OSX, and the good news is that if you already own it on PC you get the Mac version free.Read the rest of this entry »

Is… Is this E3 news? On day three, I can’t tell anymore. Did Sid Meier swing on a trapeze across the E3 concourse to announce that Civilization 5 was now available on SteamOS and Linux? Did Aspyr gather the world’s press in an art deco theatre to reveal that this was their first Linux port, after years of porting popular games to Mac? Or is it the case that there was a simple post on Civ V’s Steam forum to declare that users of Ubuntu could now begin conquering 4X strategy worlds?

What happens when you pour water over lava? You get steam. I think when Q-Games’ Pixeljunk Shooter came out for the PS3 in 2009, where the player manipulates the levels using molten rock, water, and a magnetic fluid that I’m going to call “Polly”, they were dropping a hint that it would eventually end-up on Steam. I told no-one of this supposition, but now I wish I had. The gloopy game of fluid dynamics is landing on the PC in November, and I would have looked amazing.Read the rest of this entry »

“Slow news day, eh?” Only in your underpants, loser. For all four of the Mac gamers who read RPS, this is a very, very, very, very, very fast news day. Because one of last year’s best games, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, has arrived on their shiny, overpriced, hard to upgrade PCs-with-different-software.Read the rest of this entry »

Would you rather cause a crowd of people to move as one, surrendering their bodies to a primal need that is the closest many of them will come to a spiritual experience, or unblock a toilet? Being a DJ is six hundred million times more amazing than being a plumber, so it stands to reason that Rush Bros is a much better game than anything starring Mario and his moustache. It’s not really a traditional platformer though, with a focus on two player splitscreen action and levels that are essentially side-scrolling races. There’s a demo available (Mac and PC) and a trailer below.

This is the very first time that you have been here before. The whales are watching you. They know what you did. What did you do? Ask the whales but they won’t tell you because they are silent. Mysteriously silent. You probably killed someone and it might have been an accident but there’s almost definitely blood on your hands or lipstick on your collar, or a ghost in your shoe. The hills have the answers but they’re as quiet as the whales. Only the wind has a voice and it whispers so quietly that all you can make out is a name. Esteban. Download Dear Esteban to learn the truth about your past and that girl with the eighties hair. It’s free.

Are you moderately to incredibly affluent? Then chances are high that you own a Macintosh computer. There is a slimmer chance beyond this that you have installed Boot Camp and thus Windows on your Macintosh computer, in turn allowing you to play whatever PC games you so wish. More likely you think it too complicated by half, or are like the guy who visibly recoiled, started shaking in fury/grief and needed consolation from his girlfriend upon seeing Windows running on my own Macbook.* Apple people. Whatever the reason you don’t also have Windows on your Mac, you might be happy to hear that Ncsoft’s jolly good subscription-free MMO Guild Wars 2 has just released a beta client for Macintosh computers.Read the rest of this entry »

Arabian Nights meets Metal Gear in Qasir al-Wasat, a stealth adventure about summoning, spirits and secrets. Rather than being a soldier in a set of buttock-gripping trousers so tight that they render you impossible to spot from a distance of more than five metres, Qasir al-Wasat allows you to be an invisible creature capable of absorbing poisons and secreting them from your claws. Filled with mystery, puzzles and sneakery, it’s a thoughtful slice of eastern esoterica and I highly recommend taking a look. There’s a demo, for both PC and Mac, so you can decide whether it’s worth the $9.95 you’d otherwise spend on food/frivolity.

The DS doesn’t seem like a particularly fitting home for first-person horror and that has nothing to do with the fact that Nintendo is the name on that particular domicile’s lease. Controls, screen size and unsuitability for public play all seem as though they might make a handheld an unnatural home for unnatural happenings. Dementium II’s decent combat and ‘orrible noises did draw a smattering of applause from some corners though, and the story of madness and murder is considered an improvement over the original. Welcome and surprising news of a port reaches us this morning, and perhaps the mighty PCs and Macs of the world will provide better living quarters for the institutionalised terror. Trailer below.

Moon Rising is the first project from a two-man team of veterans who have been touching screen for a while but have now decided to return to PC and Mac. Imagine that it is 2099 and the moon is being mined for its precious Helium-3. Sam Rockwell is nowhere to be seen so instead of battling boredom and a bit of an identity crisis, you’ll be scrapping over resources as the commander of one of Earth’s superpowers. Personally I don’t think Earth will be capable of supporting a single moderatepower by 2099 but I’m pleased by the optimistic view of a world still strong enough to be at war with itself. Moon combat is turn-based and tactical as shown in the video below. Beta signups are open.

I could have sworn I’d already mentioned TRIP, which seems like what would happen if gentle, musical exploration game Proteus poured hallucinogenics all over its cereal in the morning and shovelled the whole lot into its mouth using a delicate crystalline spoon carved out of frozen absinthe. ‘ART GAME’, says the trailer in brightly coloured letters that desire to be taller than buildings, before proceeding to show various creatures slowly jiving in luridly lucid landscapes. Maybe I dreamt that I wrote about it or nearly wrote about it but assumed I shouldn’t as it had been a dream rather than a PC game. Or I just misplaced a tag or two. It’s out now, on PC and Mac, priced at £7.29. Launch trailer below, impressions when I’ve formed them.

Depths of Peril and Din’s Curse are wonderful games that anyone interested in RPGs would be very wise to spend some time with. For why that is, look here and here. They’re among the few non-ascii games to capture most of the reasons that I adore roguelikes with such a burning passion and they contain worlds of consequence and reaction that should make morality sliders and alternate endings blush with embarrassment. A new game from Soldak is of great interest then, particularly when it sounds a bit like DIN IN SPACE. Drox Operative’s beta is available to prepurchasers now. Thoughts when I’ve played it and more info below.

Sphere is another in an increasing list of impressive student projects created in Unity. Here, a strong central idea is delivered through the medium of a first-person puzzle game with the most flimsy of narrative trappings. What’s clever here, as in so many of these playgrounds of spatial progression, is the mode of transport. Not portals, not cubes, but the titular sphere, a small, bouncing ball which chimes musically as it goes. Recall it with a click of the left mouse and the trail that it followed after being lobbed is marked on the screen; holding down the right button sends the player travelling along that same trail. Trailer below. Play online or download, for Mac or PC, here.